


From Forge to Fire

by lackluster_lexicon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackluster_lexicon/pseuds/lackluster_lexicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony visits Steve in the hospital after the fall of the Insight Helicarriers, HYDRA, and SHIELD. Gift fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Forge to Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Took some liberties with the end of CA:TWS to squeeze Tony. Written for Nat, my sun-and-stars. ♥

_“I’m not going to fight you.” He drops his shield, doesn’t even drop his gaze to watch it plummet into the Potomac. “I’m your friend.”_

_Another blow, sharp and clear across his jaw, and he’s down. The Winter Soldier wastes no time, closes the distance –_

_“YOU’RE –”_

_– his metallic fist meeting Steve’s cheek with ruthless abandon –_

_“– MY – ”_

_– again –_

_“ – MISSION!”_

_– and again, and even with one eye swollen shut Steve can see that the Winter Soldier – James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, his best friend, his brother – is lost in his own perception of what is happening. As far as Steve can tell, Bucky only knows what he’s been told, but everything he’s been led to believe is a lie. Steve still doesn’t quite understand where Bucky is, only that he’s buried deep, but he’d already left Bucky behind once. He isn’t going to do it again._

_“Then finish it.” It’s a risk – if Bucky isn’t in there, Steve is going to die by his hand – but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. They’re as good as dead anyway, but the least Steve can do is try to bring Bucky back. If they have to go down again, they can at least do it together._

_Bucky hesitates, his left fist sparkling orange and red in the fiery carcass of the Helicarrier. This is Steve’s chance. He’s bleeding out and just needs to see it, just needs to see Bucky as he remembered him before he goes._

_“…’cause I’m with you to the end of the line.”_

_And Steve wants to believe he sees him, but then metal screams and glass shatters and now he’s the one falling, but he’s too tired to call out, and it wouldn’t matter if he does because who’s there to hear him if Bucky isn’t?_

_He’s unconscious before he hits the water._

-

It’s the _click-click-whirrrrrr_ of that arm that yanks him out of his sleep so fast that when he opens his eyes he doesn’t see anything. He leaps to his feet anyway, or tries to, and something tears at his arm – a knife? – and _damn_ , is he sore, and it feels like hours before his vision begins to clear and he sees white walls and nurses and someone who definitely isn’t Bucky, someone he knows but – what is he doing on the Helicarrier? What are any of these people doing here? He was on a mission –

“The hell?” Someone touches his arm and he instinctively pulls back, tries to stand, and there are too many hands and his ribs are on fire and _where the hell is Bucky what am I doing in the med bay_ and over the pounding of his own blood in his ears he hears a familiar voice telling the nurses to back off, and they do, and Steve finally focuses on his own fists held up in front of him – and Tony, that’s who’s talking, Tony Stark, and when Steve looks up he sees one of the armors standing there right by the door and everything slowly, far too slowly beings to make sense.

It wasn’t Bucky. It was Tony, in the armor, in his hospital room, where he was taken after he and Sam and Natasha and Hill and Fury had taken down the Insight Helicarriers. It’s over. He’s fine.

Where is Sam?

Someone speaks, and Steve looks up. A nurse, young and nervous, and he belatedly realizes he'd spoken out loud.

“Sorry, I didn’t…where is he?”

“You fell asleep.” The nurse is speaking slowly, clearly repeating what she’d just said that Steve hadn’t caught. “He left.”

Steve nods once, slowly, and Tony claps his hands, jarring Steve’s attention back toward him.

“All right, ladies and gents, now if you don’t mind, I’d like to take advantage of what visiting hours I have left.”

The nurses look first to Tony, then to Steve, as though they expect Steve to turn Tony away.

“We’re fine. I’m fine. Thank you.” Another moment’s hesitation, and then the nurses squeeze past Tony’s inert armor and file out the door. Tony waits for the door to click shut behind him before dropping his hands, rubbing absently at his thighs as he slowly lowers himself into the seat by Steve’s bed.

“What the hell was that?”

“I’m fine, Tony.” As soon as he says it, Steve is ashamed; he doesn’t have to know how to read people to see in the wideness of Tony’s eyes or the slight parting of his lips that he’s worried – more than worried, he’s freaked out.

“…I’m not fine,” he concedes. He is nothing if not honest. His heart hammers against his ribs and the base of his throat burns with the threat of rising bile, and only with the nurses gone does he finally feel himself being pulled solidly out of the Helicarrier and into the hospital.

“I thought you – I thought _that_ ” – he nods to Tony’s armor – “was Bucky. The Winter Soldier. The guy I was…”

Steve trails off. Tony sets his jaw and nods – he understands, Steve doesn’t doubt that – and then he diverts his gaze away from Steve, toward the shuttered window.

He also feels guilty. Steve doesn’t doubt that either.

“You didn’t – ”

Tony interrupts before Steve can try to absolve him.

“Well, hey, since you’re awake, I brought you something.” Tony stands and returns to his armor, and only then does Steve notice that it wasn’t the same suit Tony’d been wearing in Manhattan.

“What happened to the old one?”

“ _So_ six month’s ago.” Tony turns to face Steve. “You’re the nostalgia guy, remember?”

Steve frowns. He’s still more out of it than he’d thought; for a moment, he can’t process what he’s seeing. Tony has Steve’s shield in his hands, and for a fraction of a second Steve sees in Tony the same barely-repressed smirk, the same proud glimmer in his eyes that he’d seen in Howard when he’d first handed the shield over to Steve –

“Did you…?” Steve moves to swing his legs over the side of the bed, and there’s that stabbing in his arm again – an IV, he finally realizes – and he pauses to gently lift the tape and pull the needle free. By the time he’s on his feet, Tony has flipped the shield around against his palms so that the emblem is facing him, as though to appraise it.

“Wade through the Potomac to find your shield? Yeah. Don’t look so surprised; the river’s, I dunno, four feet deep on average. I barely got my knees wet.” He flips the shield back around to face Steve, who takes it from him.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t drop it over four feet of water, Tony.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Four, eighty, the point is that it’s not that big a deal. And it’s just as much for my image as for yours. How would we look if Captain America didn’t have his shield?”

Steve's eyebrows quirk upward. “‘We’?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s another thing. I just finished up renovations on the tower-previously-known-as-Stark, and you’re moving in. Thor and Banner are already there, and Barton’s tracking down Romanoff. The gang’s all here – ” Tony points squarely at Steve’s chest, stopping himself with an inch to spare before making contact “ – except you.”

“Mm.” Steve looks down at the shield in his hands. He still aches from ears to ankles, but his mind is clear. He knows his answer.

“SHIELD’s gone.”

Tony’s breath hitches, and then he exhales whatever quip he’d decided to abandon. “Yeah.”

“So this would be us reuniting on our terms.”

Tony smiles, slowly. “You bet.”

Steve nods and drops the shield onto the bed, turns to look for any clothes that aren’t made of paper.

“I have something to do first. But then – ”

Tony leans forward slightly and raises an eyebrow at Steve.

“Maybe you still have water in your ears, Rogers, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I just told you that I’m reinstating a _team_. You know what a _team_ is, right?”

“Tony, this is – ”

“I swear to God, Rogers, if you say anything along the lines of ‘This is my fight,’ I’m going to jump into this thing and deck you.” He raps his knuckles against the breast of the suit and points with his other hand at Steve, both of them deliberately overlooking the hypocrisy of Tony’s (albeit empty) threat. “Now shut up and let me find you some pants so we can go find your long-lost sidekick.”

The promise of pants compels Steve to resist the urge to counter the sidekick remark, and he instead cocks his head in acquiescence, to which Tony responds with an almost dismissive thumbs-up as he turns and ducks into the hallway.

Almost. Steve turns back to the bed where the shield lays, stark and shining, against the tussled white bedding. Last Steve had seen it, it had been charred and more than a little bullet-addled. He still feels tense, ansty, but he allows himself a small smile as he reaches for the phone and dials out.

“Hey, Sam. Got a friend I want you to meet. Rendezvous at your place at oh-four-hundred? Great. And pack a toothbrush.”


End file.
